A modest and affectionate documentary, “How To Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It),” serves as further reminder to an ever-forgetful public of the work of Melvin Van Peebles, a pioneering, domineering figure in the advancement of African-American film and theater.

The film will headline Film Forum’s week-long retrospective of Melvin Van Peebles’s films that begins this weekend – and will also feature “Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song” (January 20-22), “Baadasssss!” (January 23), “Watermelon Man” (January 24), “The Story of a Three-Day Pass” (January 25), and “Bellyful” (January 26).

Though “How To Eat Watermelon …” is not as emotionally engaging as 2003’s “Baadasssss!” it offers the audience an expanded biography of this handsome picaresque with an endless reserve of determination and game. Written and directed by Mario Van Peebles (Melvin’s son), it focuses primarily on Melvin Van Peebles’s struggle in 1971 to produce and distribute “Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song,” a highly controversial and hugely influential independent film.

Given the incredible facts of Mr. Van Peebles’s life – he is the son of a Chicago tailor and Air Force navigator and San Francisco cable-car conductor who became a painter, novelist, filmmaker, actor, musician, Tony-nominated playwright, Wall Street trader, and knight of the French Legion – first-time director Joe Angio does not have to worry about attracting and sustaining the audience’s attention. Aside from one glaring misstep – a mock newsreel of Mr. Van Peebles’s early years that feels intrusive and falls flat – he is wise not to interfere with the unfurling of his portrait. Instead, Mr. Angio, who spent a decade on the project, has done what the best documentarians always do: his research. Guided by chronology, Mr. Angio has assembled and presented a profile of Mr. Van Peebles that includes film and theatrical excerpts, and archival footage. The film also includes interviews – both old and new; in English and French – with, among others, Mr. Van Peebles, his children, his classmates, his collaborators (producers, musicians, cartoonists), and his contemporaries (Gordon Parks), as well as those he influenced (filmmakers St. Claire Bourne and Spike Lee; musician Gil Scott-Heron; critic Elvis Mitchell).

Still, unlike the best documentarians, when Mr. Angio provokes the audience’s curiosity, he doesn’t always satisfy it. For example, during his account of the release of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song,” though he does not shirk from a discussion of its sexually explicit and violent content – that would be impossible – he romanticizes Mr. Van Peebles’s redemption through its political and popular impact. Mr. Angio reveals that the Black Panthers did everything they could to promote the film, but how did someone like, say, Bill Cosby react? After all, as one learns from “Baadasssss!” it was Mr. Cosby who loaned Mr. Van Peebles the last $50,000 he needed to wrap shooting of “Sweet Sweetback.” And while it is clear from an interview featured on the DVD of “Baadasssss!” that Mr. Cosby continues to support his decision to help Mr. Van Peebles 35 years later, one wonders what he might have to say about the more radical aspects of his friend’s philosophy. When Mr. Angio says that there were those who vehemently disagreed with the message of “Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song” – or, more intriguingly, those in the African-American community who refused even to talk about the film at the time of its release – shouldn’t he elaborate on these opinions and anecdotes as well?

If “How To Eat Your Watermelon …” risks sentimentality, it is easy to see why. Almost all of the interviewees are either family or longtime friends, and this air of acceptance and tribute also pervades the present-day footage of Mr. Van Peebles, who is shown sitting for and then, near the end of the film, inspecting (and approving of) a full-body sculpture of himself. Not that one should necessarily embrace such symbolic imagery. For as Mr. Angio reveals early on in his surprising and occasionally hilarious labor of love – one laughs, perhaps against one’s better judgment, at tales of Mr. Van Peebles’s sexual exploits – the man may have finally been cast into plaster, but he can still run.

Until January 26 (209 W. Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, 212-727-8112).